The Book Of Numbers | A Journey Toward Human Freedom Under God's AuthoritySample

"Baby Steps"

The second act of Numbers ends with the tragic disobedience of Moses and with the death of Miriam and Aaron. One by one Israel’s pillars fell and amidst all of this their pain, and their wounds, everything amplified due to their thirst and war. All of these things are the result of the uncleanliness and impurity remaining in the world and in the hearts of humans. God spoke to the people and warns the people of all that death and impurity can cause. He warned the people of all that would lie in the shadows of sugar-coated promises. 

As the chapter of wandering comes to an end for Israel, the next phase in Israel’s journey toward the Promised Land was filled with possibilities. Though much had been lost to Israel in pain, tragedy, sin, and disobedience, much had also been gained. Israel had grown into a great nation and currently had realized the promise and covenant blessing made to Abraham that God would make his seed a blessing, and would number his offspring more than the number of the stars in the sky. What once was a poor, disheveled, and authority-less people now had become something altogether different. This nation, though still like a newborn baby in many ways as we will continually see, slowly had become a toddler; standing to their feet and beginning to walk.  

Consider how Israel handles Arad in verse two of Numbers 21. Consider how the whole of Israel refers to themselves as “I.” In some matter of speaking, a unity and a community had formed despite Israel’s continual struggles (See Numbers 21:4-9—the Bronze Serpent). Future to Israel, this “I” was to be true again, only in the perfect sense of God’s son Jesus, as he was soon to come as the true Israel to lay perfectly “all things under his feet,” (a commonly used phrase in the New Testament).

Israel’s prayer to God to deliver things into their hands, is a foreshadowing of God declaring through Jesus that he places everything in “his hands” and allows the “I,” Jesus, to devote all the world’s evils to destruction. Both in the future, and in the present, the LORD has answered the intercessions of Israel and has responded to their faith in this passage, and the battle against Arad and the other kings is also won.